Good Fellows

Mark Budman

They told me to leave town and take the Russian with me. She had a penchant for
pearl strings and ring tattoos on her fingers and toes.

It was suicidal not to comply. We barricaded the glass door of my house with chairs and mirrors, pulled the blinds down, ate caviar on buttered bread and drank champagne straight from the bottle while wearing nothing but gun holsters: in hers—the Desert Eagle, and in mine—Smith & Wesson .44 Magnum Revolver. I cocked my gun half a dozen times. In the morning, the stars faded, the neighbors ran away, three black limos arrived, and ten guys with AK-47s fanned out.

The Russian came out from the bathroom with a toothbrush in her hand.

“I hope they brought caviar,” she said. “We are running low.”


Mark Budman was born in the former Soviet Union. His writing appeared in PEN, American Scholar, Huffington Post, World Literature Today, Daily Science Fiction, Mississippi Review, Virginia Quarterly, The London Magazine (UK), McSweeney's, Sonora Review, Mid-American Review, Painted Bride Quarterly and elsewhere. He is the publisher of the flash fiction magazine Vestal Review. His novel My Life at First Try was published by Counterpoint Press.

Comments

  1. I love this. Very tight and not a word to many.

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